
Ferguson to Asian Americans: Deconstructing Silence
It’s been 9 days since Michael Brown was murdered by the police in Ferguson, MO. It’s times like these that I abhor Facebook and shun social media because everybody has something to say and real feelings become obscured in sound bites and every single post is a tip of an iceberg that, for some, goes miles and miles deep—how could we ever truly express how we feel on social media? And yet the blatant oblivion of others, posting about food or cats or celebrities when black families mourn and rage… what’s the point of even sifting through all the posts and statuses when they only make me angrier? And my own silence. I don’t have the appropriate words to express my anger and lament, but if I did, why would I put it on social media?
Erna Stubblefield, with whom I share InterVarsity roots (wassup), wrote a post calling out the “Unacceptable Silence of Asian American Christians” and I wondered about my own silence as everything was going on. Perhaps, however, we should nuance our understanding of silence, especially in light of a crisis, especially in light of a crisis that repeats itself over and over and has been repeating itself over and over since this country started. I am so tired of this bullshit. And I believe that it’s important to take a stance but maybe there is such a thing as an acceptable silence. A silence that mourns. A silence that laments. A silence that rages. A silence that gives us space, finally, to actually feel what we need to feel instead of always running, always numbing, always asserting our opinions so we don’t have to actually face our own brokenness, our own hands filthy with the same injustices we protest. I am tired of opinions. I am tired of running away. I am tired of us using Michael Brown’s death to talk about anything but mourning Michael Brown’s death. I am tired of injustice both out there and in here.
What is happening in Ferguson is a damn tragedy. It is centuries of racial tension releasing itself in earthquakes. If you are not convinced by now that our Gospel must be big enough to include reconciliation between communities and not just abstract atonement for personal sin, then the church offers no prophetic assertion for the country’s greatest, most grievous sin, the sin that lies beneath all other sins this country commits, and there are many. If the “Good News” is not Good News for all of humanity, if it is only good news for white Christians or rich Christians or Christians like us, then it is not good news at all, it is only news that separates and divides and reinforces the status quo. I still don’t understand how some Christians sit idly by while the country burns in black and white, except that I do.
Yes, I too was upset about the lack of Asian American voices standing in support of Michael Brown. And yes, I was even more frustrated with the folks who seemed to actively voice other concerns while Ferguson was going on, almost as if to say, “There are more important matters for me today.” But I get it. I’ve been there. And while I echo Erna’s concerns, I cannot chastise us for our apathy because it is an apathy tied inextricably to a firm, subconscious, heartbreaking belief in white supremacy as it is embedded in the American Dream. But our apathy does not dissipate with reprimands; it is too deeply entrenched in our consciousness for that. We have to deconstruct it before we can destroy it, so let us pause for a moment before we apologize for our own brokenness.
I didn’t know how to care about racial justice until I had to. And that’s just it: 1) it’s not that we don’t care, it’s that we don’t know how to care and 2) we’ve never had to care. I can’t tell you how many times I heard this stuff in college, learning words like “privilege” and “systemic injustice” and “racial reconciliation” but never having a concrete framework for that information to be anything more than abstract: I grew up with Asian Americans. I go to church with Asian Americans. I went to school with Asian Americans. My distinctiveness, the uniqueness of my community, and the nuances in racial difference never crossed my mind because we were pushed into ethnic enclaves where race was taken for granted. I never had to think about it, so I didn’t. It’s not an excuse, it’s just the reality.
So when I moved to Chicago, living with white and black peers in a black neighborhood, for the first time in my life, I was confronted with my own distinctiveness. And we had great conversations on race, privilege, and injustice, but the players were always black and white. Our conversations on race did not include me.
This is precisely why Asian Americans are silent when it comes to racial justice. There has never been a place for us in the conversation on race and we don’t have a clue about how to assert ourselves because we never had to. The players have always been black and white and so we let the conversation rage on without us because we were always too in-between to know how to dress our experience in language. And so we continue on, silent, compliant to simply take up space on a black-white racial binary that lets us off the hook from ever knowing just how powerful our voices could be.
In Chicago, if I did not speak up, then my teammates would never hear from an Asian American voice. So for the first time in my life, I had to know who I was. I had to learn how to articulate my story. I had to use my voice. Because before my teammates could ever understand the Asian American perspective on race, I had to learn the Asian American perspective on race. So I did. I went to the library and I ate up every book I could find on Asian American history and identity. But if I had never been put in that position, I never would have learned.
The American Dream has necessitated our assimilation into whiteness for the sake of success. We don’t see Ferguson as “our issue” because we abandoned the black community a long time ago. To our families, the thinking went: why would you associate with the black community when blackness represents downward mobility? Our goal, then, was to talk like white people, dress like white people, play music like white people, and think like white people because white people were on top. And they still are.
And then we went to white seminaries because we wanted to be successful Christians too. So we went to Masters and Gordon-Conwell, bastions of white Evangelical theology, and we distrusted Union and Princeton because they taught scary things like Liberation Theology. And we studied Calvin, Edwards, Barth, Tillich, and old white guy after old white guy until we believed exactly what they believed and we ran our churches just like they did despite the fact that we possessed a very different story. And the “God” of white western theology never said a mumbling word about racism or injustice because those things never even crossed the mind of the white Christian. In fact, white Protestantism often supported racism and injustice (and still does). This is the Christianity that was passed on to our pastors. This is the Christianity we have bought into. It does not align with our story. It does not honor our personhood. It is not complete and it is not wholly just.
But we were just playing the game. We were just living off the script. And so our silence is a product of our assimilation. Our silence is us not having a damn clue about what Michael Brown has to do with our community. Our silence is us forgetting about Vincent Chin, Danny Chen, Harry Lew, Japanese internment, the Exclusion Acts, and the massacres. We willingly forget because why would we care about our ethnic identity when it is precisely our forgetting that has afforded us success in this country? And why would we challenge a status quo that has given us everything we deem valuable?
So many of us in the Asian American community have never been placed in a position where we had to learn who we were. So many of us have never had to use our voices. Because on our way to American success, we lost ourselves. We gained the world but forfeited our souls, trading in our God-given narratives for test scores and white collar jobs. Meanwhile, other communities of color watch us cater to whiteness and wonder why we left them behind.
So, as an Asian American Christian, I stand with Michael Brown and I mourn his death. I lament for Ferguson and I stand against all forms of white supremacy and injustice both out there and in here, in the ways I have internalized those lies in my heart. I believe in a Gospel that says something about injustice, a Gospel big enough to confront America’s greatest, most evil sin. I believe that Jesus came to make things right again. And I hope, more than my words, more than a Facebook status or a blog post, that my actual life, the decisions I make every day, reflect my belief in a God who makes all things new. Lord have mercy on us all.
Hey Nate! Been following your blog for awhile, but felt compelled to comment after this post! As a Korean-American, living in a poor black neighborhood of Pittsburgh in a house of 3 other white guys, I feel the black-white racial binary strongly. I have been feeling more and more compelled to share my voice as an Asian-American, but I don’t know what that voice is… do you have any suggestions for good books to read to better understand Asian-American race/identity/history?
Jeffery, I just stumbled on this post. I am also Asian American and have grown up with the sort of Asian American enclave community like Nate did to an extent. And it wasn’t until my early 20s that I learned about the richness and importance of the Asian American role in U.S. history.
For me, the book that was a turning point in how I looked at myself as an Asian American is Helen Zia’s Asian American Dreams. Zia’s book to me is a pretty easy read.
For a more detailed and academic take, check out Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from a Dream Shore.
For a more fun visual glimpse, check out the graphic novel Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology (Jeff Yang, Perry SHen, Keith Chow, Jerry Ma)
Also Frank Wu’s Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White.
More here: http://blog.sfgate.com/reyeschow/2010/05/11/10-books-to-read-for-asian-pacific-american-history-month/
Also check out Hyphen Magazine and the Angry Asian Man blog.
I’m from the South, so that is also part of my identity. I recently started this book Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South. I haven’t finished it yet so I can’t say much.
I’m also currently reading Ericka Lee’s Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. This one focuses on the immigration aspect of the Asian American identity via Angel Island, the west coast version of Ellis Island, but with a much less welcoming past as a sort of detention center.
thanks for the resources, other asian american person! im intrigued by the asian americans in dixie book… what was it like growing up in the south?
jeff, thanks for the comment. one thing that has struck me in a lot of my conversations with folks who have relocated is that just bc someone has a concern for social justice doesnt mean that they know how to speak about racial justice, even though my assumption is that the two would be a package deal. do you and the other 3 guys you live with have a lot of conversations on race/racism?
whatever the case, much respect that yall are living it out in places that may have a lot of outward brokenness and poverty. some resources that have been helpful for me: why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria by beverly tatum; the next evangelicalism by soongchan rah; jesus and the disinherited by howard thurmond; god of the oppressed by james cone… and now that i’ve made this list i see that there arent a lot of books distinctly about asian american history/identity… haha. afro asia by fred ho was an important book for me as i was figuring my place in a black community. reading the biographies of api activists like yuri kochiyama and grace lee boggs was also significant.
and of course, to read the books is one thing; to be able to discuss them with people who have thought about it and wrestled with it for awhile is another. they’re both so crucial. but id say the fact that you’re already living in a neighborhood where you’re automatically confronted with your otherness and with structural racism will hopefully put the flesh onto the books.
again, appreciate the comment, jeff. it helps me process my own stuff too. be blessed my friend
I love the nuanced nature of your post but . . . do you ever get the sense that we’re being played? That the liberal media industrial complex loves to latch on to certain events and blow them way out of proportion? Blacks and Asians die every day in the US and we have to identify ourselves with this tragedy? Why this one? I mean, you’re certain white supremacy was the over-riding factor in all this? Really? After most eyewitness accounts agree that Brown leaned into the car and Wilson’s gun discharged and Brown ran off. Have you ever been confronted by a 6′ 4″ 292 lb. black man? Do we have any empathy for Wilson? Perhaps forgiveness? Is injustice forgivable?
This is more than just about what happened with Mike Brown. This is about what is happening systemically with blacks and, in other (but also very wrong) ways to other non-whites in America. And why it is wrong. Even if the facts showed that Mike Brown deserved to die, I do not think that would negate the supremacy of being white in America, or make that hierarchy okay.
You do not have to identify yourself with this tragedy. Unfortunately, there are countless others from which to choose. And that is the problem.
AOM, I appreciate your thoughtful response. I have an inkling of what this represents to the black community in the US. And yet I would never presume that this one incident would have any impact, positive or negative, on the supremacy of being white in America. I don’t understand things like why Donald Sterling loses a franchise for careless remarks to a female associate but not for documented housing discrimination. Why is it we over-value certain types of events and way under-rate others?
Fred,
You are precisely right on how certain events/actions seem to get over-valued compared to others. In the case of the NBA and Sterling, the issue is, as is so often the case, money. Right or wrong, the NBA knows that people don’t really care about housing discrimination, so in their eyes, that’s forgivable. But the incendiary comments made by Sterling (not for the first time and certainly not careless, though they were intended to be private), make him, for lack of a better word, unmarketable. And when that happens in a big, very public relations-oriented business like the NBA, you’re on your way out. Sterling’s ouster had less to do with justice than the fact that with so many coaches, players, and fans offended, it was going to affect the bottom line.
You are also at least partly right that the shooting of Brown, even if it turns out to be the worst variation of the stories that are being told, is still a single event, and righting it would not solve the bigger problem. But it is around single moments that history often turns — perhaps because it simply has to turn somewhere. When Bull Connor used fire hoses and attack dogs against peaceful protesters during the civil rights movement, that was only one such incident — and arguably not as bad as the lynchings and de jure segregation of the day. But it was a key moment nonetheless.
Will the Brown shooting be another such moment? I doubt it. But the rioting and protests going on in Ferguson are not just about the shooting, and the bigger picture of what’s going on there, with a militarized police force way overstepping, may bring about a deeper and broader conversation about the bigger dynamics that create this problem.
much agreed, fb. as i allude to in my post, ferguson is the earthquake, and a big one at that. but racism and white supremacy are ever-present tensions that lie beneath the surface at all times, just waiting to be set off. if we are incapable of having healthy dialogue in times of latency and relative quiet, we will not be able to survive when the racial earthquakes do hit. and that’s what’s happening right now.
hey pastor fred – always grateful for your thoughts.
if im understanding you correctly, i would agree that this is just one event, one pixel on a huge canvas of unjust events that happen in this country (and have been happening for centuries). i agree that the media–liberal or conservative–has little incentive to report on these issues unless they know it’ll get ratings. as a whole, the media could care less about justice.
these days, white supremacy is as silent as it is ubiquitous. while i recognize that not a lot people use that term anymore, i really do believe that white supremacy was the overriding factor in this, as you phrase it. that doesnt mean the police officer is running around yelling the n-word and actively hating black people. but it does mean black people are unconsciously refused the benefit of the doubt, they are unconsciously seen as threats, and they are unconsciously valued less than other people. and i believe the fact that we even get to ask a question like, “have you ever been confronted by a big black man?” comes from our deeply held beliefs that there is something inherently threatening about a big black man, but there isn’t. and it gets even worse when michael brown’s (or trayvon martin’s or oscar grant’s or whatever slain black man’s) death is supposedly “justified” if people can prove that he was some sort of criminal or “thug,” as if he deserves to die. i don’t care if the guy was a pot-smoker, thief, “gangster” or whatever racialized term we want to use–he doesn’t deserve to die. a rich, educated black person is just as valuable as a poor, unemployed black person is just as valuable as a white person is just as valuable as you or me and i know if people who looked like me kept getting killed without due process, i would be highly suspicious of this system. and i am.
i do believe wilson “deserves” forgiveness, as we all do. however, i believe real reconciliation happens when not only the individual person and his actions are restored, but the system that supported his sin and all the underlying power dynamics underneath his transgressions are confronted and redeemed. and i believe in this case reconciliation would look like wilson doing his due diligence to understand the black community, listening to the black community, and ultimately being restored within the black community. but that is a heavy cross to bear on both sides, and most people do not seem to be ready for real forgiveness and reconciliation. im not sure if i am.
Nate, here’s what I’m concerned about:
1) What is the criteria we use to assign events to a given narrative?
2) What is the criteria we use to evaluate a given narrative?
So for 1) the event in question has conflicting accounts. Here’s one perspective:
http://www.unz.com/pbuchanan/race-based-justice/
Before anyone denies the evidence or labels the writer, I would like to see evidence for the popular account. At the very least, we have disputed facts. I don’t think Brown deserved to die but why he died is a completely different question. There probably was injustice but I’m not sure yet whether it belongs in the white supremacist narrative. Anyone 6′ 4″ and 292 lbs. is threatening. When that person is black, living in an impoverished neighborhood where crime rates are high, it matters. Black crime is a real problem.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/07/ron-unz/race-and-crime-2/
We can pretend this evidence doesn’t exist but it does.
So how do you know INSTANTLY when the event occurs and because the black community is in an uproar, that we must automatically assign this event to the white supremacist narrative?
For 2) The narrative in question is the liberal portrayal of race relations in this country (aka white supremacy). I don’t buy it. At least not completely anyway. I agree there is systemic discrimination and I agree that having police officers listen to the black community would be awesome but I feel uncomfortable when Christians completely buy any political philosophy. I certainly don’t agree with everything liberals write and same for conservatives. This may be a race quake and everyone wants to do duck and cover drills but as a Christian, I’m not completely aligned with the world’s systemic approach. Just because I agree on the problem doesn’t mean I have to agree with the solution. I don’t have a better system answer. Part of me senses a lot of economics at play.
hey pastor fred. again, grateful for your response. would love to meet up some time to discuss these issues in person because the safety i feel behind my laptop is not conducive to honest, humanizing conversation.
what pains me is that a lament has turned into a debate and while i do wish to respond to your points, i hope we can both agree that the premature death of any person is something to mourn over, not to theorize or theologize over.
though i profoundly disagree with you, i hope to honor and respect you because i get the sense that we’re both trying to do the best we can with what we’ve been given.
to put it personally and simply: i am a white supremacist. i view myself, my experience, and my faith through the lens of white racism and supremacy. i know that i am a white supremacist because sometimes i hate myself and my own culture. america does not call me “good” or “valuable” and in the ways i have internalized this belief in life and faith is the extent to which i have internalized white supremacy.
white racism and supremacy means that non-white experience and appearance are, at best, non-normative and divergent from what “ought to be” and, at worst, worthless. and it’s not just white people who believe this. so that’s how i know–yes, instantly–that ferguson is an outworking of white supremacy and white fear.
because even if you could somehow convince me that michael brown was the worst human being alive, even if he robbed a liquor store, charged at the police, and took a dump on darren wilson’s front yard, and even if you could prove to me that “black crime is real,”–whatever that means–“realer” than white crime, “realer” than Asian crime, “realer” than any other group’s crimes, i would still know that his death and the subsequent anger in ferguson were functions of white racism and supremacy in america. and to go one further, even if michael brown was killed by another black man from his own community, it would still be an outworking of white supremacy.
because white supremacy is the lens through which all americans view themselves and each other. it is the ever present tension that causes all racial earthquakes–“justified” or not. so the “facts” of that day are rather unimportant to me: why study 3 inches of the racial fault line to see where this earthquake started? it’s the whole tectonic plate that’s the problem and more earthquakes are coming.
and i agree with you 100% that economics are at play: white racism is at the root of american economics. white racism IS american economics and black/red/brown/yellow bodies have always been commodities for white industry and economic progress.
all of this is offensive to my belief in imago dei, to my understanding of what the kingdom of God is about. and this is why i would give everything to see reconciliation. and not some cheap reconciliation where white people are punished and colored people get retribution, but where all are honored in their particularity and where people no longer see themselves or their own communities through the lenses of self-hatred and worthlessness.
so please do not label me “liberal” because american liberalism will never use the term “white supremacy”–both american liberalism and conservativism operate within the confines of white supremacy and the dismantling of racism would transform all american politics because it is the foundation on which it rests.
maybe i sound like some ridiculous conspirator but it is what it is. i have no illusions about my (in)abilities to convince you of what i’ve seen to be true. that’s not my goal. but i hope you can respect and honor where i’m coming from. and maybe we can get coffee together because this comment has worn me out. peace.
[…] post). Because I felt like I was being co-opted into a story, on the basis of my race – that never truly included me. And this is why, predictably, you see Asian Americans who sympathize more with Brown, others with […]
I am thankful for you, Nate.
Nate, I’m so glad I found your blog! I have been thinking about the same issues in regards to Asian American Christians and I was looking around the internet for a voice on this topic and found you! Thank God! You are so encouraging. I have been convicted recently about our silence…. and have been thinking deeply about why we are silent. And when I go to look for words… I couldn’t find any. I realized that it is because I have been running from my shame and brokenness and eventually banished it from awareness altogether. And now I’m digging deep and pulling out bits and pieces of it and it’s all just a tangled, disjointed mess…. but you put such wonderful words to it!
yhu, thank you for your kind words. i hope you keep digging and untangling and deconstructing and fighting and lamenting and praying… let me know what you discover in your journey! god bless
Nate, came upon your blog, and am so glad you’re speaking on this! Hope you’re doing well.
steph! good to hear from you! hope you’re doing well too!
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Nate,
This is powerful, moving, motivational, and and inspiring. I look forward to continuing the conversation with you!
thanks bella! we’ll keep talking for sure! glad you got back home safely 🙂
[…] different ways for us, White hegemony has impacted and hurt us both. In his brilliant post, “Ferguson to Asian Americans: Deconstructing Silence,” Nate J. Lee […]
[…] in different ways for us, White hegemony has impacted and hurt us both. In his brilliant post, “Ferguson to Asian Americans: Deconstructing Silence,” Nate J. Lee […]